A former Culver City High School student who alleges she was sexually assaulted by multiple football players who then distributed video images of the attack has sued the school district, claiming officials were negligent.
The student, identified in the lawsuit only as “A.S.,” was a 14-year-old freshman at the time of the alleged December 2013 incidents. She changed school twice and moved to Chicago to find “respite” from the effects of being sexually assaulted, harassed and raped, according to the lawsuit.
The civil complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court Jan. 14, outlines abuses that occurred at the hands of a student named as Jeremy Weaver and two other unidentified upperclassmen. All three were football players, the lawsuit states.
Weaver and one of the other alleged assailants asked the girl to hang out in the school’s parking lot and listen to music when she was unexpectedly sexually assaulted and raped, according to the complaint.
She was soon forced to engage in sex acts with the help of the other unnamed attacker, the complaint states.
“Throughout the next several days, defendants repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted A.S. on school grounds and during school hours,” the lawsuit says.
The threesome raped her, forced her to perform oral sex and other sex acts, then secretly videotaped the assaults and distributed the images “throughout the school to other students” while “spreading malicious rumors regarding A.S.’s ‘sexual promiscuity,’” the lawsuit states.
The football players also allegedly threatened the plaintiff if she reported it and harassed and intimated her afterward. “A.S.” was a virgin before the attacks, according to the lawsuit.
“A.S.” reported her allegations to school officials, and she believed they told the boys, the lawsuit says. She suffered post-traumatic stress disorder among other emotional injuries.
She attempted suicide, the complaint states.
Weaver, who was 18 at the time of the alleged attack, was convicted for three counts of oral copulation of the minor and one count of dissuading a witness from committing a crime, according to the complaint.
An 18-year-old named Jeremy Ray Weaver was arrested by Culver City police on Jan. 15, 2014, according to online county inmate records. He was released the following evening.
L.A. County court records indicate a Jeremy Ray Weaver was convicted in June of one felony count of lewd act upon a child by use of force, threat or duress. Three other counts against him were dismissed or not prosecuted in July, records show.
Weaver, the other two alleged assailants and the school district are all named as defendants in the lawsuit, which seeks unlimited monetary damages. It was filed on behalf of “A.S.” by her guardian, named only as “Tiffany T.”
The lawsuit was filed by downtown L.A. attorney Jonati Yedidsion. According to the biography page on her firm’s website, Yedidsion is a “top female sexual abuse attorney.”
The lawsuit alleges: negligent supervision of students on the part of the district; negligence in hiring and training of school employees, also on the district’s part; and general negligence on the part of Weaver, the two other alleged assailants and the district.
Culver City Unified School District, which was on holiday Monday, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.